The inclusion of USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s into the feature-sets of mid-thru-high end motherboards, have sparked off a mini wave of motherboard SKUs carved out on the basis of these features alone. Gigabyte, which recently unveiled its P55A family of socket LGA-1156 motherboards, has just done the same for its high-end socket LGA-1366 motherboard, with the introduction of the GA-EX58-Extreme2. Unlike other motherboards by the company that simply slipped in USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s while retaining essentially the same component layout, the GA-EX58-Extreme2 is a completely new design, that does not look similar to that of its predecessor, the GA-EX58-Extreme.

Gigabyte made use of not one, but two Marvell 88SE9123 2-port 6 Gb/s controllers, to give out four 6 Gb/s ports (color-coded white), all internal. Furthermore, two USB 3.0 controllers have been included to provide four ports. Unlike its predecessor, the GA-EX58-Extreme2 provides four PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots (electrical x16, NC, x16, NC; x16, NC, x8, x8; or x8, x8, x8, x8, depending on how they're populated.) The CPU is powered by a 24-phase circuit, and is wired to six DDR3 DIMM slots to support up to 24 GB of memory across a triple-channel interface. The chipset and VRM cooler supports water-cooling. The rest of its feature-set remains in tune with its predecessor: six SATA 3 Gb/s ports, dual gigabit Ethernet, 8-channel audio, and support for both ATI CrossFireX and NVIDIA SLI technologies. Gigabyte may include this into the wave of products it plans to launch ahead of the winter shopping season. A video preview can be watched at the source.

by: BingeExcept when dealing with x58. The only rival for Gig is EVGA. ASUS has been average for some reason no matter what board.

Asus is just plain overpriced in this part of the World, and EVGA is simply ridiculous. :shadedshu
Asus is like always 10%+ more expensive then the other brand for the exact same hardware. (The Asus 5870 is like woot!??)
Crazy enough there is only 1 store that sells EVGA in HK and it is also their only sales agent in HK.

by: ZubasaAsus is just plain overpriced in this part of the World, and EVGA is simply ridiculous. :shadedshu
Asus is like always 10%+ more expensive then the other brand for the exact same hardware. (The Asus 5870 is like woot!??)
Crazy enough there is only 1 store that sells EVGA in HK and it is also their only sales agent in HK.

Trust me they're on par with Gig, no better. If it was that much cheaper I would glady use Gigabyte.

After owning 7 different x58 boards, I can say that all three of the Gigabyte x58 boards are superior to any of the x58 boards from Asus, Biostar, DFI and Asrock. The only thing that matches the UD5 is the EVGA Classified, which is $100 more.

I dunno, the classifieds are wicked nice, i just wish i had the IRL experience with one to have a better opinion.
If the reliability is the same between the two, then why such a large price difference? just the black pcb? :laugh: